Build the movement while you build the app.
A simple plan to bring people into your message, turn them into a real community, make money along the way, and give your app its first users — the ones who will test it, shape it, and tell everyone else about it.
- Prepared For →
- Ellen Martinez
- Prepared By →
- Ryan Brooks, Hard Knock Labs
- What This Is →
- A Community & Offer Plan
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Meet Jordan. This is the person every part of this plan is built for.
Before we talk funnels, prices, or platforms — start here. Because if this story doesn't feel real, none of the rest of it will either.
The ceiling, in the dark.
Jordan stares at the ceiling. The promotion came faster than she expected, and now it's three weeks in and she still can't sleep most nights. Her team is looking at her like she has answers she doesn't have.
She picks up her phone, half hoping it'll knock her out. Instead, somewhere between two reels, an ad slides past — a free video series, four short lessons, called "Your First 30 Days as a New Manager."
She almost scrolls past. Then she taps it.
Watching, alone, after the house is quiet.
Her kid is asleep. The dishwasher is humming. Jordan watches one of the videos with the sound low, and for the first time in months, she feels something other than panic in her chest.
Somebody on the other side of the screen is naming things she's been afraid to say out loud. She writes down a script from one of the lessons in the back of her notebook.
Four videos is not enough. She wants more.
She pays $147 — and finds a room full of people like her.
She signs up. To her surprise, the program isn't just videos. It's a real online community built on Skool, full of other newly promoted managers who feel exactly the way she does.
On day three she posts a small win — a hard conversation that went better than she expected. Within an hour, six strangers have responded. Two of them ask her how she opened the conversation.
She closes her laptop smiling. For the first time, it doesn't feel like she's doing this alone.
She can manage up. But the team is still the hard part.
The challenge finishes. Jordan has new language for her boss, new rituals for her week, and a small group of peers she now actually texts.
But she still doesn't know how to develop the people on her own team. They're so different from each other. What one of them needs feels like the opposite of what the next one needs.
Right at that moment, the next thing arrives in her inbox: the Light, Water, Soil framework course. It is exactly the question she's living in.
She becomes a beta tester without ever applying for it.
Because Jordan is active in the community, she gets early access to a new app the team is building — quietly, in the background. It helps her track what each person on her team actually needs: more light, more water, better soil.
She starts using it on Mondays. Her one-on-ones get sharper. Two people on her team who were quietly checking out start showing up differently. Retention on her team goes up. So does output.
Her own boss notices. He asks her, almost casually, what she's been doing differently.
Her boss wants the whole department doing this.
Her boss sends a calendar invite. He'd like to talk about rolling this out across the whole department. Could she connect him with the people behind it?
It is a six-figure conversation that arrived as a warm referral, not a cold sale. Jordan didn't sell anything. She just kept showing up and getting better at her job — and the people around her started asking why.
This is the story of how people become the movement — one person, one real step at a time, building into a community that speaks the same shared language and becomes bigger than any single course or any single app.
The movement has a name: People Are Primary. Not technology-first. Not process-first. People first — and everything else, the app included, exists to serve that belief. The rest of this page is how to build that movement on purpose, at scale, in a way that pays for itself as it grows.
Jordan's story only matters if it can happen a thousand times over.
That means a repeatable system — one that brings in real revenue as it grows, and quietly builds the app's future user base at the same time.
annual turnover rate in the frontline industries Ellen already serves — the people are ready for a better way to be led right now.
the app has already been in development. The community can start now, in parallel, instead of waiting for a launch date.
one online community can do three jobs at once — bring in money, teach the framework, and hand the app its first users.
You don't want to crash, you want to drip on people. The healthier, kinder way is — like a houseplant — you don't want a big dump of water that hurts the plant.
That's the spirit of this plan: grow the community the way you'd water a houseplant — patient, intentional, alive — not a big launch that floods the room and washes everything out.
If you're new to this, here's what we mean by a few key words.
What's a funnel?
A path someone walks from the very first time they hear about you to the moment they become a true fan. It's not a sales trick — it's just the order in which trust gets built.
What's an offer?
Anything someone can buy or join. The trick is that each offer should solve exactly one problem. Don't try to do everything in one product. Let the small ones lead to the bigger ones.
What's Skool?
A website built specifically for online communities and courses. People log in, watch lessons, post, comment, and talk to each other — all in one clubhouse-like space. No ads. No noise. Just the group.
What's a beta tester?
Someone who tries a new app before it's finished, gives honest feedback, and helps shape what gets built. Done well, beta testers turn into your loudest, most loyal fans.
Sell the message in small steps. Let the people who buy in become your app's first users.
The shift is small but everything turns on it: the community isn't something that comes after the app. It's how the app gets born with a built-in audience.
Wait, Then Launch
Spend the next year heads-down. Hope the launch day is loud enough. Pay strangers to care.
- 01Finish the app in private.
- 02Launch it to strangers who've never heard of you.
- 03Spend ad money to explain your framework from scratch.
Teach, Gather, Then Launch To Friends
Start the community before the app is done. Earn money and trust at the same time. Launch into welcome.
- 01Open a free lesson and a paid community right now.
- 02People learn the framework and pay you along the way.
- 03The app launches to a room of people who already love it.
Five simple stages. Like watching a seed grow into a full plant.
None of these stages are clever. They're patient. Each one only works because the one before it did.
Find Your Person
Get sharper than sharp on exactly who this is for. Not "leaders." Not "managers." A newly promoted middle manager with no playbook, lying awake at night, scared of getting it wrong.
Build the Path of Offers
Line up the offers in the right order: the free video series, the paid 30-day challenge, the deeper Light, Water, Soil course, and the monthly community. Each one answers the question the last one raised.
Open the Door
Launch to real humans. Watch what they click, what they buy, what they say back. This is where we learn whether the words land in their bodies — or only in their heads.
Run the Community Well
Build out templates, lessons, weekly rituals, and tools. Keep the room feeling cared for — small enough to know names, structured enough that people grow inside it.
Hand the App Its First Believers
Invite the most engaged members into the app as beta testers. Their feedback shapes it. Their results sell it. Their stories become the way new people first hear about Light, Water, Soil.
Let's walk through it like you've never seen it before.
Imagine you're Jordan again — newly promoted, slightly drowning. Here is the whole path, in the order she'd see it.
A Free Video Series
Four short videos teaching the first 30 days as a new manager.
They think: "I get it now — but I don't actually know how to do it."
The First 30 Days Challenge
A 30-day program inside the Skool community with templates, weekly calls, and peer support.
They think: "I can manage up now — but how do I lead my own team?"
A Live Working Session With Ellen
A small-group 90-minute live call, max 10 people. Bring a real problem, leave with a plan.
The Light, Water, Soil Course
The deeper course on understanding what each person on your team actually needs to grow.
Just the Toolkit
Templates and tools without the full program. For people who want to self-serve.
They think: "I want to keep growing, and I want to be part of this for good."
The Light, Water, Soil Community
Monthly Skool membership with new lessons, a live call, a tool library, and first access to the app as it's built.
Skool is where the movement actually lives and breathes.
We're not picking Skool because it's trendy. We're picking it because it does the four things this plan needs more than any other tool.
One home instead of scattered tools.
No more piecing together a course platform, a Slack, an email list, and a payment tool. Skool collapses all of it into one place people actually open.
The framework gets reinforced just by people talking.
Inside the community, members start using Light, Water, Soil language to describe their own teams. The framework gets taught every single day, by the members themselves.
Real peer-to-peer connection, not just a relationship with Ellen.
People stay for the room, not just the teacher. That's what makes the community survive busy weeks, big launches, and Ellen needing a vacation.
The easiest place to spot future testers and ambassadors.
The most engaged members reveal themselves naturally — by how often they post, how they help each other, the wins they share. Those are the people who become the app's first believers.
The same people who join the community become the people who spread the word.
There is no separate marketing team here. The members are the marketing — because they helped build the thing they're recommending.
They Join
Joins the free video or paid challenge to solve their own problem.
They Learn The Framework
Starts thinking and talking in Light, Water, Soil language through lessons and the community.
They Become A Member
Joins the monthly community to keep growing and stay close to the group.
They Become A Tester
Gets early access to the app, gives honest feedback, helps shape what gets built.
They Become An Ambassador
Tells friends and coworkers because they helped build it. The loop starts again with new people.
Each step answers the question the last step created.
This is the same logic as Light, Water, Soil itself: light reveals a need that water answers; water reveals a need that soil answers. Nothing is being pushed. Each next offer is just the natural answer to the question the last one raised.
This isn't a plan we're forcing onto your work. It grows out of it.
It teaches the framework by having people live it.
Members don't just hear about Light, Water, Soil — they use it on their own teams every week. That's how a framework becomes a worldview.
It brings in real revenue while the app keeps getting built.
Instead of waiting for launch day to find out if anyone cares, the community generates income and proof every month, with very little additional work.
It builds the app's first user base for free.
Every member of the community is a future beta tester. We don't need to spend ad money later to find people who already understand the framework.
It turns happy customers into an unpaid sales team.
When people help shape something, they tell other people about it. The growth loop is genuine word of mouth — not paid promotion.
A simple, three-step start. Nothing big or risky.
We don't need a giant launch. We need a small, careful beginning that we can grow on. Here's the first 90 days.
Roll the Consultation Fee Into This Project
The strategy work we've already done becomes the foundation. We carry that momentum forward so nothing is wasted — every insight, every decision, every piece of alignment turns into this build.
Build the Funnel and Offers Together
My team works alongside the People are Primary team to map the funnel, shape the offers, and make sure the story we're telling matches the community people will actually experience.
We Run the Marketing for You
Once the funnel is built, my team manages the marketing — the ads, the content, the testing, and the rhythm that keeps the right people moving toward the community.
Ready to build the funnel and let my team run the marketing?
The next step is a short call. We'll confirm the scope, talk through how the consultation fee rolls over, and decide what the first 90 days look like together.
Ryan Brooks · Hard Knock Labs